timegate security holy hell

[Mouse]

please

for the love of god

end our suffering

[Caro]

Considering the recent wave of new players? Yes

Requirement of 10 rounds played is not much and it will prevent the completely new players from making the mistake of joining security on their first rounds

It's not gatekeeping, both the new player and the crew will most likely have a bad experience which can even be discouraging from playing the game at all

[Comrade f191]

Personally I feel that 20-30 rounds would be better, rounds generally dont last long so it shouldn't take too long, plus it allows the player to actually have the experience needed to be able to properly understand most mechanics they'll be using and the associated expectations of an Officer.

[kyle2143]

I agree with having some rounds played before you can roll security. I tried to push for it before after the sseth tide settled and I think I remember some people considering it to be elitist, but that's bullshit. It's not about restricting players so much as it's about giving them time to learn before being put in one of the most essential roles.

Someone playing security officer while they are still learning how to work the HuD menu is unfun for all parties involved.

I might just do it this time and see. I really don't think there's much reason not to, or at least nothing I've heard sounded compelling.

[GORE]

I think a gate would be alright - but for the sake of people who might already know lots about the game SS13 - just never played on GOON previously - don't set the gate-time too high.
Between 2 hours and 5 would be alright,...
Or between 10 and 20 rounds.

[Frank_Stein]

I've seen some green players as Sec lately. Like, still trying to work through the controls and figuring out how to drop and use things.

I think at the very least having to play 1 round should be fine, since at least they'd learn that they still had a lot to learn.

[Sundance]

Yes please.

It is pretty demoralizing when trying to lead a team but you just end up cleaning up the mess they've made. I can gauge how well security will work together from 1 minute in by simply doing a roll call. If they respond, brilliant. If they give me sass, even better. But lately unfortunately i've had cases where it's been tumbleweeds on the radio and i've been pretty much shouting orders into the void to players who are actively undermining the force.

I'd rather 1 good officer than 3 shit ones who will get their stuff stolen by some staffie. My standards are very low here, so long as they can actively talk on the sec freq, that to me is really what separates the good from the bad.

I don't want to demote officers, which I have done lately. It's a sad feeling, like I am part to blame. But you really need to have a few rounds behind you before you understand what I would call "the comradery" of security.

It is not necessary for you to play security to get this - being arrested by a good team will give the player a perspective on how things should work. In contrast, being arrested and beaten to a pulp by a shit team only establishes hatred and gives players the complete wrong idea.

10-15 seems like the goldilocks zone here, I'd feel 30 is a bit too much. If players play 2-3 rounds a day, that's only really a week or two before it's unlocked. No other strings necessary here.

[Drago156]

dear god YES PLEASE. I've seen a number of... I hate to use this term but it's the best term for this situation ...shitsec players or absolute new people with no clue what they're doing.

This would help to keep new players out of a role they're potentially not ready for but would also prevent people from hopping into the servers to just grief with security equipment, which I have seen a lot more of than the former case.

I personally side more towards the 20-30 round range, because seriously, that's nothing. I mean we have people that have over 2000 rounds, and that's just since the stat started getting tracked.

[KikiMofo]

I forget what my stance was during the ssethtide but my stance right now is yeah might as well give them a couple of rounds to actually I dunno, learn the controls before getting thrown into security. Only security though, I remember one of the problems people brought up back then was all heads and security but personally I always find it funny when theres a brand new player as captain.

[GORE]

I see the reasoning behind time gating it and I agree,...

But I cannot stress enough that there are dozens of different SS13 servers out there and I reckon that many expect security to have one standard to not be a dense meathead.

20-30 rounds is awfully long if you imagine that you might have played this game for a long time with hundreds of hours on TG; then decide to try out GOON and are greeted by a time-gate that seems as awful as TGs own time-gating. I guess players from TG might feel right at home with that...but as I was new to GOON I really enjoyed that I was free to test out various departments.

During my first months I was obviously quite a shitter myself but since then I strived for improvement.

All I wanna say is: Don't set the time-gate too high. There are people that have played this game for hundreds of hours and have a general idea on how to behave and there are even new players that might be a good addition to the security team. It would just be nice to set a reasonable time-gate and not let players have to play for a whole month to try out this role.

Ten rounds sounds reasonable...but 20-30...damn that is a lot.
I reckon per round on average 40-60 minutes. So lets say 20x60 minute rounds...5x40 minute rounds and 5x20 minute Nukie or Rev rounds. This already adds up to 1500 minutes; 25 hours.

That is just way too long.

---

I just noticed I stabbed my own previous post in the back by critcizing 20 rounds,...

Oh well - my mind changed.

What gives.

---

I think we can all agree here that a time-gate is reasonable.
Question is how to find the best middle-ground?

[Studenterhue]

Personally, I don't have any especially strong feelings regarding whether or not a timelock is a good idea or how long it should be. (Leaning more towards having one than not.) Most I want is that, if someone codes this, they also add a message notifying the admins that this is a player's first sec round. They should also be aware we track number of rounds but not time played (and there's nothing really preventing us from tracking time if we wanted to code such a system).

[RichardGere]

I think this is a good idea too; it prevents people from hopping on just to grief as sec (albeit that is rare), and it guarantees that new sec players will be at least a little bit comfortable with the controls.

[Studenterhue]

Bumping this topic. Had a pretty good chat about merits of security timelocks in admin chat the other day. Don't put too much weight on the "admin chat" thing; it wasn't like pathology where we had votes and formal discussions and statements drafts and such. It was more like someone dropping a suggestion for a timelock because they were starting to get tired about having to deal with all the awful security (which is not too different from how it goes in #spaceman-discussion). This isn't really an official decree, more like a personal endorsement based on conversations with others.

Anyways, a lot of people were for it based on these arguments:

• Sec is not really a good job for learning the game as a newbie - This is my particularly favorite argument. It demands you understand a lot of game mechanics (e.g. intents, types of antag, brig system, weapons, combat, general idea of what's deadly and what isn't), it gets stressful at higher pop, and people often have unrealistic, almost toxic expectations of Security. Compare to say, janitor, chef, or botanist, which are much more relaxed while still offering good opportunities to learn game mechanics, especially item interactions.
  
• New players often have a tenuous grasp of the rules, both of the general game rules and sec-specific rules, and the consequences of breaking rules are higher - I think this is one of the most common reasons for a timelock, and I think it's a very valid reason.
  • Part of it is they're new and don't really know of their options. - For example, I often get situations where the new sec player doesn't know they start with a flash in their pouch or that they can and should redeem their tokens for stun gear, so they often wind up beating people to arrest them.
    
  • Part of it is they don't always understand the grief rules. - A lot of times, I see people kill others just for flismy reasons, like "looking suspicious" or breaking into their department, rather than throwing them out. It's bad enough as say doc or barman but it's worse as Sec, who have a lot of nonlethal options that don't involve taking people out of the round. I've even heard from one admin about a sec player who just murdered an assistant just for being an assistant.
    
  • Part of it is they don't know what is crime and isn't crime and what the appropriate punishments are. - This sort of ties into the above, it also includes stuff like what kinds of antags there are and what they do and what kinds in general are considered criminal activity. I get stuff like "no, that robot wasn't an 'evil android' trying to kill you, it was trying to bring you a bag of weapons it found" and "no, you don't get to jail people just for insulting you".
    
• Higher population and lack of timelock means there's a lot of new sec to teach, and teaching them is more stressful. - There's more players, so there's more new sec (same goes for other jobs). It's simply easier to teach one person than multiple, and that's not even getting into how skilled the recruit might be. It's already stressful enough, for higher populations means there's more crime to handle, so it's taxing for both teacher and student.
  
• One of the old arguments against timelocking sec was that there'd be less people who'd want to play Sec, to the point where there might never be Sec at all. It's somewhat invalid now due to the sheer amount of players.
  

Personally, I don't like 10. I still grump at people who have 10-20 rounds played for the same things people with 1-10. 20-30 is more my liking. 50 is when people generally have a pretty good grasp of rules but that's rather too high.

I don't think we ought to factor time spent playing Sec on other servers. Sec on other servers is pretty different, for a variety of reasons, from differences in average length of game rounds (which influences what punishments are considered fair or not fair), differences in punishment options, differences in types of antags and other threats sec encounters, differences in rules surrounding Sec, even differences in Sec's arsenal. Simply put, I don't think the experience is transferable.

---

One of the other admins also offered the idea of locking Sec behind a medal, which you'd earn by completing VR training. It's certainly novel, but I don't think a VR training session, or even multiple sessions, is a good substitute for playing some rounds and seeing what Sec has to deal with and how they ought to deal with it. I think it'd make more sense as a sort of tutorial for new Sec fresh out of the timelock or maybe even an additional requirement on top of the timelock.

[KikiMofo]

When I'm HoS I'm fine with helping a new sec officer learn the ropes but thing is I'm expecting to teach the SECURITY ropes not the whole HOW TO PLAY THE GAME IN GENERAL ropes. After a week of playing the game I assume they know how to play the game in general and are ready to learn how to play security.

[Frank_Stein]

Would it make sense to do this in a kind of department way?

Like, be locked to a staff assistant the first round, civilian roles the next, then medical/engineering/research, then Sec? Throw heads either at the beginning or end of this